(Edit by Jared...this is the beginning of the third election/politics thread; starting with Jack's poll. I also added the libertarian option to the poll...PK, you're welcome. )
Now that we have the nominees, lets get an idea of what everyone here is planning to do in the upcoming election.
Last edited by JackB1 on Mon Sep 08, 2008 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I really don't like having multiple politics threads (as this is ostensibly a sports gaming forum)...so I'm going to lock the old politics thread and turn this into the new one, with the poll at the top.
A bit early for this, don't you think? There are eight weeks until the election.
A lot can happen before Election Day, although I understand that some people are so locked into idealogy that they would vote for their party's candidate even if he or she were Lucifer.
Jared wrote:I really don't like having multiple politics threads (as this is ostensibly a sports gaming forum)...so I'm going to lock the old politics thread and turn this into the new one, with the poll at the top.
Ugh. Just my opinion, but why kill 83 pages of evolution, opinion and context so we can satisfy the supposed need for a whimsical multiple-choice poll?
Server concerns. Really long, popular threads can bog things down a bit, and stopping them after they hit a ridiculously long length is usually a good idea for that reason (that's why I locked the last one). I was planning on making a new politics thread anyways, and this just presented an opportunity to integrate the two. However, if people don't care for it, I can lock this thread and open up a new, poll-less politics thread. I personally don't care either way.
pk500 wrote:A bit early for this, don't you think? There are eight weeks until the election.
A lot can happen before Election Day, although I understand that some people are so locked into idealogy that they would vote for their party's candidate even if he or she were Lucifer.
Take care,
PK
That's partly the idea Paul. To see how many already have their minds made up and how many are swing voters?
Server concerns. Really long, popular threads can bog things down a bit, and stopping them after they hit a ridiculously long length is usually a good idea for that reason (that's why I locked the last one). I was planning on making a new politics thread anyways, and this just presented an opportunity to integrate the two. However, if people don't care for it, I can lock this thread and open up a new, poll-less politics thread. I personally don't care either way.
Roger. You know the back-end mechanics of the site better than anyone!
On the value of the dollar and manufacturing jobs, don't discount the positive effects of a weak dollar. A fair number of European car makers are already or in the planning stages to move some manufacturing to the US. Airbus is talking about moving some manufacturing here as well. Why? Weak dollar against the euro means labor costs are cheaper here than Europe.
pk500 wrote:Ugh. Just my opinion, but why kill 83 pages of evolution, opinion and context so we can satisfy the supposed need for a whimsical multiple-choice poll?
Thanks,
PK
While I don't envision myself scouring the last thread, perhaps linking to it in the first post of this thread would be appropriate.
F308GTB wrote:On the value of the dollar and manufacturing jobs, don't discount the positive effects of a weak dollar. A fair number of European car makers are already or in the planning stages to move some manufacturing to the US. Airbus is talking about moving some manufacturing here as well. Why? Weak dollar against the euro means labor costs are cheaper here than Europe.
So American companies become relatively more competitive because the currency is so weak.
Weigh that against higher costs of fuel and other commodities because of the weak dollar.
In the last GDP adjustment, it was 3.3% and most of that was due to exports. In other words, the domestic demand is non-existent.
I believe BMW and other Euro. car makers are seeing sales fall off. So it remains to be seen if the savings from doing final assembly here makes up for lower sales.
On Airbus, isn't that mostly related to the tanker deal they hope to get from the Pentagon? Their civil aircraft is still made in Germany and France. American airlines aren't the biggest customers of new airliners these days.
F308GTB wrote:On the value of the dollar and manufacturing jobs, don't discount the positive effects of a weak dollar. A fair number of European car makers are already or in the planning stages to move some manufacturing to the US. Airbus is talking about moving some manufacturing here as well. Why? Weak dollar against the euro means labor costs are cheaper here than Europe.
So American companies become relatively more competitive because the currency is so weak.
Weigh that against higher costs of fuel and other commodities because of the weak dollar.
In the last GDP adjustment, it was 3.3% and most of that was due to exports. In other words, the domestic demand is non-existent.
I believe BMW and other Euro. car makers are seeing sales fall off. So it remains to be seen if the savings from doing final assembly here makes up for lower sales.
On Airbus, isn't that mostly related to the tanker deal they hope to get from the Pentagon? Their civil aircraft is still made in Germany and France. American airlines aren't the biggest customers of new airliners these days.
Are you referring to the US consumer cost for fuel or global consumer cost for fuel? Currently both fuel and aircraft are traded in dollars, which puts a squeeze on the European and Asian markets. While the weak dollar hurts the cost of our fuel, it equally pains those others. Just recall the strikes in France a month or two ago by truckers/farmers over fuel. In Japan you had an uncharacteristic one-day strike/protest by fisherman over high fuel prices.
The global market is changing. Companies used to have cheap labor population of 2 billion (China and India) to choose from. India now has the world's largest middle class, and China is facing that boost in personal wealth as well. There aren't as many places to find cheap labor as there once was. There will be a point where domestic manufacturers realize it is cheaper to keep the work here as opposed to shipping it across borders.
tell you what, from this distance the Tentacled Terror isn't nearly as scary as that bint the Republicans have put up for VP.
"The players come from all over the world, the money from deep underneath the Persian Gulf, but, as another, older City poster campaign put it, this is their city. They may now exist in the global spotlight, but they intend to keep it that way."
F308GTB wrote:
Are you referring to the US consumer cost for fuel or global consumer cost for fuel? Currently both fuel and aircraft are traded in dollars, which puts a squeeze on the European and Asian markets. While the weak dollar hurts the cost of our fuel, it equally pains those others. Just recall the strikes in France a month or two ago by truckers/farmers over fuel. In Japan you had an uncharacteristic one-day strike/protest by fisherman over high fuel prices.
The global market is changing. Companies used to have cheap labor population of 2 billion (China and India) to choose from. India now has the world's largest middle class, and China is facing that boost in personal wealth as well. There aren't as many places to find cheap labor as there once was. There will be a point where domestic manufacturers realize it is cheaper to keep the work here as opposed to shipping it across borders.
I'm talking about the futures prices for oil as traded on ICE and NYMEX. In the past year at least, it's moved inversely with the movement of the dollar.
Overall price of oil has gone up and hurt everyone. But especially against the dollar.
Other commodities have shown a similar relationship or are indirectly affected by the dollar through the price of oil, because of the cost of transport as well as energy to harvest ag commodities.
Summary
We’ve been flooded for the past few days with queries about dubious Internet postings and mass e-mail messages making claims about McCain’s running mate, Gov. Palin. We find that many are completely false, or misleading.
Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn’t cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years.
She did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library. Some of the books on a widely circulated list were not even in print at the time. The librarian has said Palin asked a "What if?" question, but the librarian continued in her job through most of Palin's first term.
She was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a group that wants Alaskans to vote on whether they wish to secede from the United States. She’s been registered as a Republican since May 1982.
Palin never endorsed or supported Pat Buchanan for president. She once wore a Buchanan button as a "courtesty" when he visited Wasilla, but shortly afterward she was appointed to co-chair of the campaign of Steve Forbes in the state.
Palin has not pushed for teaching creationism in Alaska's schools. She has said that students should be allowed to "debate both sides" of the evolution question, but she also said creationism "doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."
A few of these claims were included in a chain e-mail by a woman named Anne Kilkenny. We'll be looking into other charges in that e-mail for a future story. For more explanation of the bullet points above, please read the Analysis.
XBL Gamertag: RobVarak
"Ok I'm an elitist, but I have a healthy respect for people who don't measure up." --Aaron Sorkin
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